Covertly Buy both Sony and Nintendo

Take their well known branded characters and take them into ventures outside of gaming, possible fund a terrorist group like ISIS where all members dress as Mario/Nathan drake/Cole etc and have them commit atrocities on a level which makes ISIS look like kiddy hour. Basically make it so any time someone see's Mario they think their life is about to end and question why they hadn't supported the Xbox Brand instead, a brand which to date has had little involvement with terrorism.

If you could potentially do some side research projects into recreating real world versions of the Wipeout ships too, that would be fantastic... then fly them into major buildings around the world.

If the Ataribox does prove to be successful you will also have to splash out a few billion to buy them and create a living version of the Pixels giant PacMan monster to terrorize cities who still think that it's okay to buy non Xbox Brand systems... has to be so large that it's terrifying but not so big that you can't get great visuals of it eating school buses/kids/the elderly etc.

If you're in to win... gotta sometimes think outside the box people!!

Why won't anyone say that MS  buy valve ?

Now mission complete !

That would only lower the quality of Steam and Valve output. Microsoft being in control of great companies does nothing to maintain their greatness. Have we learned nothing from Valve or Lionhead?

The team Microsoft created made Halo 5. This is probably why they are giving 343 as much time as possible to make Halo 6 as good as possible. They dont want another response to the campaign that they got last time. the Multiplayer was near perfect.

What Valve output?

Nothing as of late. I've  been playing Valve games before Steam came out though, so I know their potential. Plus, their games are still running on PC and are still top level PC games after over a decade. If Microsoft wants to own the PC realm legitimately they must go through Valve, because they did what Microsoft could not. They failed to make hub for complete social gaming while they were going after the PS3. Steam gained huggggggee profits for valve after everyone put their resources into porting their games to console last gen and PC was losing popularity for a short while. Where Windows Live failed, Steam succeeded. Microsoft tried to put Windows live behind a paywall and Steam showed them they can do it without nickel and diming consumers.

The pricing of the Scorpio tells me that financially the state of Xbox must be in a good place for them. So I assume by "recovery" we're talking back into a state where they can sell 80 million consoles or whatever the 360 sold. I think the easiest answer is being ready to eat a lot of money on hardware. Outside of the policies blunder at the reveal, their biggest mistake was launching weaker hardware at a more expensive price. They have the brand power and games to sell a lot of consoles, but the mass market cares about price. Launch hardware that matches or exceeds the next products from Sony and Nintendo for a better price and there you go.

To offset those hardware losses you'll have more games selling, more revenue from Live, and more revenue from other services like Game Pass or EA Access. It's too late with the Xbone, that reveal and price created a snowball for PS4 that has rolled downhill and become too big to overcome. I think it really is that simple for them next gen though, just be a lot smarter price wise.

Being anti-used games DRM did them in too. They were planning to create a paywall block for used games. Thats when Sony dropped the mother of all mic drops at E3 in response to that. Jack Tretton though will always be a legend for that moment in E3 history.

Ok, so this thread has gone on long enough without me answering my own question. So here's what I would do...

1. Launch the next Xbox in 2020 as an upgradable system, with parts that are so easy to change, that a toddler could do it. Anybody remember how easy it was to change the harddrive on a 360? Now just make all the parts that easy to change out. Xbox starts out as a base model, and you can then make it as powerful as you want it to be. Or you can just buy a shell of an Xbox and the parts separately. Building your own custom Xbox console should be as simple as snapping Legos together. This opens up a whole new market for hardware sales, and takes building your own PC and brings it to the masses.

2. Make the Xboxlive storefront as good as Steam in every way shape and manner imaginable. You've got discounts on games? Our discounts are just as good! You've got an eternal storefront that will never go offline, so your digital games will never be lost? So do we!

3. Put the revamped Xboxlive storefront on Windows, and make it replace the awful Windows live storefront.

4. Allow people to sell or trade one digital game that they bought a month if they have an Xboxlive subscription. Give the power back to the consumers. This makes it so buying digital doesn't mean that you can't trade or sell your game. This gives real value to digital games as a whole. It also tells the consumer that they are sorry about the no-tradable-games fiasco from the launch of the XB1.

5. Offer money to Japanese developers so that they will port their games to Xbox. There really isn't much MS can do about Sony's 1st party lineup, but it's downright embarrassing when so many good third-party games aren't on Xbox. Where is Neir: Automata for Xbox? Where is Nioh? How about Tales of Berseria? If MS doesn't do something about this then by the end of 2018 there will be over 25 fantastic games that are playable on PS4, but *not* playable on Xbox. That's ridiculous, and a pathetic showing on MS' part.

6. Make Forza a series that arrives every two to three years. Take 75% of the talent dedicated to Forza games and put it to work making two new IPs. Leave enough talent on the Forza team to allow them to finish a new Forza game in three years' time.

7. Stop hyping so many mediocre games. Sorry but Crackdown 3, and Sea of Thieves won't be good. Stop acting like they will be. Rare hasn't been good since the 90's, and Crackdown 2 was mediocre. Yes, let those studios keep trying to make good games. There's nothing wrong with this. But don't make these games your end all be all, marketing push. Do you see Nintendo wasting all their money promoting games like Hey Pikmin, Paper Mario Color Splash, and Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker? Of course not. You don't hype up your B team developers like this. That just sends a message that you don't have any good developers working for you.

Xbox doesnt have the brand power and games to sell "a lot of consoles" outside the US and Halo isnt what it used to be. They tried what you suggest with the 360 -good HW at low price- and in the end PS3 took over. It's all about the games, MS just doesnt have them. They haven't cultivated a 1st party that puts out great IP at healthy intervals, instead relying on their "triforce" and moneyhatting 3rd party exclusives like Bioshock, Mass Effect, GTA IV, COD DLC etc but they were all temporary measures prolonging the arrival of a big ass problem, which is hurting them now.

Xbox will never dominate gaming, anyone that believes otherwise just hasn't travelled the world enough to know how weak the brand is outside Merica. It will never sell another 85M. MS doesn't view gaming thru the same lens as Sony and Nintendo. They tried to bruteforce their way in just like Zune and Windows Phone and the fastest way to do that is to buy 3rd party exclusives instead of making them.